I was recently told, by an American who’d read America’s Gift, how astounded he was at how little he knew about the history of his country’s music. And he was a big blues fan. “America’s Gift should be taught in schools,” he said. “But it won’t be, because there’s too much in it (America’s Gift)…

  It’s astounding just how many assumptions there are about the evolution of the blues. I remember Van Morrison saying recently that “some people think the blues started with Jimi Hendrix”. Others think blues started in the 1950s with the emergence of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and company. Talking of John Lee Hooker, I…

  I’ve just made a short film using a superb 1928 guitar duet as the soundtrack. It’s by Lonnie Johnson and jazz guitar pioneer Eddie Lang, who died prematurely five years later aged just 31. There’s more about Eddie in my book America’s Gift. Eddie Lang is playing rhythm guitar and the wonderful single string…

George Barnes, anyone? I bet only the most hardcore blues and jazz enthusiasts know of that sublime electric guitarist George Barnes. This isn’t just sad, it’s a travesty. George was recorded eight years before Muddy, before Buddy (Guy – not Holly), before even Howlin’ Wolf – in those days before the electric blues-style of guitar-playing we know…

One of London’s lesser known attractions is a network of ancient tunnels, carved out by man, under the city’s leafy south-eastern suburb of Chislehurst. Fittingly, David Bowie, who lived and grew-up in nearby Bromley, regularly performed in the Chislehurst Caves with his pop band, the Konrads, in June 1962. David was 15-years-old and yet to change his…